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A single neuron sits in a petri dish, crackling in lonely contentment. From time to time, it spontaneously unleashes a wave of electric current that travels down its length. If you deliver pulses of electricity to one end of the cell, the neuron may respond with extra spikes of voltage. Bathe the neuron in various neurotransmitters, and you can alter the strength and timing of its electrical waves. On its own, in its dish, the neuron can’t do much. But join together 302 neurons, and they become a nervous system that can keep the worm Caenorhabditis elegans alive—sensing the animal’s surroundings, making decisions and issuing commands to the worm’s body. Join together 100 billion neurons—with 100 trillion connections—and you have yourself a human brain, capable of much, much more.

How our minds emerge from our flock of neurons remains deeply mysterious. It’s the kind of question that neuroscience, for all its triumphs, has been ill equipped to answer. Some neuroscientists dedicate their careers to the workings of individual neurons. Others choose a higher scale: they might, for example, look at how the hippocampus, a cluster of millions of neurons, encodes memories. Others might look at the brain at an even higher scale, observing all the regions that become active when we perform a particular task, such as reading or feeling fear. But few have tried to contemplate the brain on its many scales at once. Their reticence stems, in part, from the sheer scope of the challenge. The interactions between just a few neurons can be a confusing thicket of feedbacks. Add 100 billion more neurons to the problem, and the endeavor turns into a cosmic headache.